A group of passionate Black women from Miami Workers Center and several organizations held “Blacks Girls Day at the Capitol” on Feb. 15 at Florida’s capitol.
Miami Workers Center, an organization dedicated to building the collective strength of low-income people of color and communities for power and self-determination, hosted the “Blacks Girls Day at the Capitol” with efforts to fight the issues of education, immigrants, women reproductive justice and minimum wages.
Jasmen Rogers, the gender justice coordinator for the Miami Workers Center, said that the legislative decisions on these topics can directly affect Black women.
“When we started looking at legislations and so of the laws that were being propose for this legislations session, we started having conversations around how this impact black women and girls,” Rogers said.
Organizations like the New Florida Majority, Women March of Florida, the Florida Student Power, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Florida Latina Advocacy Network, Power Youth Center for Social Change, and S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective also participated.
Talayah Daniels, a mass communications student at Bethune-Cookman University, was at the capital and is also a member of the Florida Student Power.
“This was a great experience, I learned a lot about the bills that are being passed and how everything will affect me,” Daniels said. “I am going to get more students to join Florida Student Power, so we can go on more trips like this.”
Halimah Wynn, a junior agronomy student and a member of Generation Action at FAMU, said “Blacks Girls Day at the Capitol” was an event important to host because it is possible to make a difference in the community. Wynn also said that the day at the capitol was an opportunity to support women from different organizations to become unified and represent the causes they support.
“This event showed these girls that live in particular area that it is possible to make a difference in the community also in Congress.” It doesn’t matter how old you are to make a difference, in order to strive for something, we first have to see it in some sense.”
Rogers expressed that she wants women and girls of color to be represented. She acknowledged that her and organizations like Miami Workers Center are dedicated to fighting for the opportunities that Black women and girls have.
“We wonder if anyone was having conversations on how laws are disproportional impacting Black women and girls in the state of Florida. That’s why we came up with Black Girls at the Capitol,” Rogers said.
“I want these girls to know that there are opportunities for them,” Rogers said.